Glimpses of World History

by Jawaharlal Nehru

  A clash between these two sets of volunteers in Ireland seemed inevitable, and that meant civil war. Just then a greater war, the World War, broke out in August 1914, and everything else sank into insignificance before it. The Home Rule Act indeed became law, but at the same time it was provided that it must not come into operation before the end of the war! So Home Rule was as far off as ever, and much was to happen in Ireland before the end of the war came.

  I am bringing up my account of various countries to the outbreak of the World War. We have arrived at this stage in Ireland, and so we must stop for the present. But one thing I must tell you before I finish this letter. The leaders of the Ulster rebellion, instead of being punished for their activities, were rewarded soon after by being made Cabinet Ministers and holders of high offices under the British Government.

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  Britain Seizes and Holds on to Egypt

  March 11, 1933

  From America we took a long hop across the Atlantic to Ireland. Let us hop again now to a third continent, Africa, and to another victim of British imperialism, Egypt. In some of my letters to you, references were made to Egypt’s early history. They were brief and scrappy because of my own ignorance. Even if I knew more about the subject than I do, I could not go back at this stage to the early days again. We have at last almost finished our account of the nineteenth century, and are on the threshold of the twentieth, and there we must remain. We cannot be going backwards and forwards all the time! Besides, if I attempted to tell the story of each country’s past, would these letters ever end?

  Still, I would not have you imagine that Egypt’s story is more or less of a blank. For Egypt is the Ancient among nations, and carries us back farther than any other country, and counts its periods not in paltry centuries, but in thousands of years. Wonderful and awe-inspiring remains still remind us of this remote past. Egypt was the earliest and greatest field for archaeological research, and as stone monuments and other relics were dug out from under the sand, they told a fascinating tale of the days long, long ago, when they were young. This process of digging and discovery continues still, and adds fresh pages to Egypt’s ancient history. We cannot yet say when it begins and how it begins. Already, nearly 7000 years ago, civilized people lived in the valley of the Nile with a long record of cultural progress behind them. They wrote in their picture-language, the hieroglyphics; they made beautiful pottery and vases, and vessels of gold and copper and ivory and carved alabaster.

  Even before Alexander of Macedon conquered Egypt in the fourth century BC, thirty-one Egyptian dynasties are said to have ruled there. From out of this vast period of 4000 or 5000 years some wonderful figures of men and women stand out, and seem almost alive even today— men and women of action, great builders, great dreamers and thinkers, warriors, despots and tyrants, proud and vain rulers, beautiful women. The long succession of Pharaohs passes before us, millennium after millennium. Women have full freedom and are among the rulers. It was a priest-ridden country, and the Egyptian people were always wrapped up in the future and in the other world. The great Pyramids, which were built with forced labour and with great cruelty to the workers, were a kind of provision for this future for the Pharaohs. Mummies again were a way of preserving one’s body for the future. All this seems rather dark and stern and joyless. And then we come across wigs for men, for they used to shave their heads, and children’s toys! There are dolls and balls and little animals with movable limbs, and these toys suddenly make us remember the human side of the old Egyptians, and they seem to come nearer to us through the ages.

  Britain Seizes Egypt

  In the sixth century BC, about the time of the Buddha, the Persians conquered Egypt and made it a province of their vast empire, which stretched from the Nile to the Indus. These were the Achaemenid kings, whose capital was Persepolis, and who tried and failed to subdue Greece, and who were finally defeated by Alexander the Great. Alexander was welcomed in Egypt almost as a deliverer from the harsh rule of the Persians. He left his monument there in the city of Alexandria, which became a famous centre of learning and Greek culture.

  You will remember that after Alexander’s death his empire was split up amongst his generals and Egypt fell to the lot of Ptolemy. The Ptolemies soon acclimatized themselves and, unlike the Persians, accepted Egyptian customs. They behaved like the Egyptians, and were accepted almost as if they continued the old line of the Pharaohs. Cleopatra was the last of these Ptolemies, and with her death Egypt became a province of the Roman Empire a few years before the Christian Era is supposed to have begun.

  Long before Rome adopted Christianity, Egypt took to it, and the Egyptian Christians were persecuted by the Romans and had to hide in the desert. Secret monasteries grew up in the desert, and the Christian world of those days was full of wonderful and mysterious stories of the miracles performed by these hermits. Later, when Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, after Constantine had adopted it, these Egyptian Christians tried to revenge themselves by cruel persecutions of the non-Christians, or pagans as they were called— those who confessed the old Egyptian religion. Alexandria now became a famous Christian centre of learning, but Christianity in Egypt, now that it was the State religion, became a thing of sects and parties continually quarrelling with each other and fighting for mastery. These bloody feuds became such a nuisance that the people generally were thoroughly tired of all the Christian sects, and when, in the seventh century, the Arabs came with a new religion, they were welcomed. This was one of the reasons why the Arab conquest of Egypt and North Africa was an easy one. Again the Christians became a persecuted sect and were cruelly repressed.

  So Egypt became a province of the Caliph’s empire. The Arabic language and Arabic culture spread rapidly, so much so that the old Egyptian language was superseded. Two hundred years later, in the ninth century, as the Baghdad Caliphate weakened, Egypt became semi-independent under Turkish governors. Three hundred years later Saladin, the Muslim hero of the Crusades, made himself Sultan of Egypt. Soon after Saladin, one of his successors brought a large number of Turkish slaves from the regions of the Caucasus and made them his soldiers. These white slaves were called Mamelukes, which means slaves. They had been carefully chosen for the army, and were a fine body of men. Within a few years these Mamelukes revolted and made one of their own number Sultan of Egypt. Thus began the rule of the Mamelukes in Egypt, which lasted for two and a half centuries and, in a semi-independent way, for almost 300 years more. Thus this body of foreign slaves dominated Egypt for over 500 years—a remarkable and unique instance in history.

  It was not as if the original Mamelukes formed a hereditary caste or class in Egypt. They were continually adding to their numbers by choosing the best of the free slaves belonging to the white races of the Caucasus. These Caucasian races are Aryans, and so the Mamelukes were Aryans. These alien people did not thrive on Egyptian soil, and their families died out after a few generations. But as fresh Mamelukes were being brought, the numbers, and especially the strength and vitality, of this class were kept up. Thus these people did not form a hereditary class, but nonetheless they formed an aristocracy and a governing class which lasted for a long time.

  Early in the sixteenth century the Turkish Ottoman Sultan of Constantinople conquered Egypt, and he hanged the Mameluke Sultan. Egypt became a province of the Ottoman Empire, but still the Mamelukes remained the governing aristocracy. Later, when the Turks became weak in Europe, the Mamelukes did much as they liked in Egypt, although in theory Egypt continued to be part of the Ottoman Empire. When Napoleon came to Egypt at the end of the eighteenth century he met and defeated these Mamelukes. You may remember the story I told you of the Mameluke knight who rode up to the French army, and after the fashion of the Middle Ages and the days of chivalry, challenged its leader to single combat.

  So we reach the nineteenth century. For the first half of this century Egypt was dominated by Mehemet Ali, an Albanian Turk, who had become governor of the
country, or “Khedive” as these Turkish governors were called. Mehemet Ali is known as the founder of modern Egypt. The first thing he did was to break the power of the Mamelukes by having them treacherously massacred. He also defeated an English army in Egypt and made himself master of the country, just acknowledging the suzerainty of the Turkish Sultan for form’s sake. He built up a new Egyptian army drawn from the peasantry (and not the Mamelukes); he built new canals; and he encouraged cotton-growing, which was to become Egypt’s principal industry. He even threatened to take possession of Constantinople itself by driving out his nominal master, but refrained from doing so, and merely added Syria to Egypt.

  Mehemet Ali died in 1849 at the age of eighty. His successors were feeble and extravagant and incompetent folk. But even if they had been better than they were, it would have been difficult for them to stand up against the rapacity of international financiers and the greed of European imperialisms. Money was lent by foreigners, especially English and French financiers, to the Khedives at exorbitant rates, mostly for their personal use, and then warships came to collect the interest when this was not paid in time! It is an extraordinary story of international intrigue, of how financiers and governments work hand in glove with each other in order to despoil and dominate another country. In spite of the incompetence of several Khedives, Egypt made considerable progress. Indeed, the leading English newspaper, The Times, said in January 1876, “Egypt is a marvellous instance of progress. She has advanced as much in seventy years as other countries in five hundred.” But in spite of all this, the foreign financiers insisted on their pound of flesh and, making it appear that the country was heading for bankruptcy, called for foreign intervention. The foreign governments, especially the English and French, were only too eager to intervene. They wanted an excuse, for Egypt was too tempting a morsel to be left to itself, and also Egypt was on the route to India.

  Meanwhile the Suez Canal, built with forced labour and great inhumanity, had been opened for traffic in 1869. (It may interest you to know that there appears to have been such a canal between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean in the time of the old Egyptian dynasties about 1400 BC!) The opening of this canal immediately brought all the traffic between Europe and Asia and Australia to the Suez, and the importance of Egypt grew still more. For England, with her vital interests in India and the East, the control of the Canal and of Egypt became of paramount importance. The English Prime Minister in 1875, Disraeli, brought off a clever coup by buying up at a very low price all the Suez Canal shares of the insolvent Khedive. This was not only a good investment in itself, but it gave a great deal of the control of the Canal to the British Government. The rest of Egypt’s shares in the Canal went to French financiers, so Egypt had practically no financial control left over the Canal. From these shares the British and the French have drawn enormous dividends, and have at the same time controlled the Canal and had this vital grip on Egypt. In 1932 the dividend of the British Government alone amounted to £3,500,000 on its original investment of £4,000,000.

  It was inevitable that the British Government should try to gain further control of the country, and so in 1879 they started interfering continuously in Egyptian internal affairs, and put their own financiers in control. This was naturally resented by many Egyptians, and a nationalist party grew up bent on ridding Egypt of foreign interference. The leader of this was a young soldier, Arabi Pasha, who came from poor working-class parents and had joined the Egyptian army as a private. His influence grew and he became Minister of War and, as such, he refused to carry out the directions of the English and French controllers. England’s answer to this refusal to submit to foreign dictation was war, and in 1882 the British fleet bombarded and burnt the city of Alexandria. Having thus proclaimed the superiority of Western civilization, and having also defeated the Egyptian forces on land, the British now took full control of Egypt.

  In this way began the British occupation of Egypt. It was, in international law, an extraordinary position. Egypt was a province or a part of the Turkish dominions. England was supposed to be on friendly terms with Turkey, and yet she calmly occupied a part of these dominions. She put an agent of hers there. He was the boss over everybody, a kind of Great Moghal, like the Viceroy of India, and even the Khedive and his ministers were powerless before this British agent. The first British Agent was a Major Baring, who ruled in Egypt for twenty-five years and became Lord Cromer. Cromer ruled Egypt like a despot. His first concern was the payment of dividends to the foreign financiers and bond-holders. This was done regularly, and great praise was forthcoming for Egypt’s sound finances. As in India, a measure of administrative efficiency was also brought about. But at the end of the twenty-five years the old Egyptian debt remained what it had been at the beginning. Practically nothing was done for education, and Cromer even stopped the starting of a national university. His outlook can be judged from a sentence in a letter of his written in 1892, to Lord Salisbury, who was then Prime Minister in England: “The Khedive is going to be very Egyptian”! For an Egyptian to behave as an Egyptian should, was an offence in the eyes of Lord Cromer, just as for an Indian to behave as an Indian should is frowned upon and punished by the British.

  The French did not like this British control of Egypt; they had got no share of the loot. Nor did the other European Powers like it and, needless to say, the Egyptians did not like it at all. The British Government told everybody not to worry, as they were only in Egypt for a short while and would soon leave it. Again and again it was formally and officially declared by the British Government that they would evacuate Egypt. This solemn declaration was made about fifty times or more; it is difficult to keep count of it. And yet the British stuck on, and are still there!

  In 1904 the British came to an agreement with the French over many matters in dispute. They agreed to let the French have a free hand in Morocco, and in exchange for this the French agreed to recognize the British occupation of Egypt. It was a fair give and take, only Turkey, which was still supposed to be the suzerain Power, was not consulted, and of course there was no question of asking the Egyptian people!

  Another feature of Egypt during this period was that the Egyptian courts had no power or jurisdiction over foreigners. These courts were not supposed to be good enough, and the foreigners were entitled to be tried by their own courts. So, what are called “extraterritorial” tribunals grew up, with foreign judges and with foreign interests at heart. One of these very foreign judges of the tribunal has written about them: Leur justice a merveilleusement servie la coalition étrangère qui exploitait le pays. I believe that the foreign residents of Egypt also escaped most of the taxation. A happy position—not to be taxed, not to be subject to the laws or courts of the country you are living in, and, at the same time to have every facility to exploit that country!

  So Britain ruled and exploited Egypt, and her agents and representatives lived with all the pomp and pageantry of autocratic monarchs in their Residencies. Naturally nationalism grew and reform movements took shape. The greatest Egyptian reformer of the nineteenth century was Jamaluddin Afghani, a religious leader who sought to modernize Islam by reconciling it with modern conditions. He preached that all progress could be reconciled with Islam. His attempt to modernize Islam was similar in essence to attempts made in India to modernize Hinduism. These attempts are based on going back to certain basic teachings, and to finding new meanings and interpretations for old customs and dogmas. According to this, modern knowledge becomes a kind of addition to, or commentary upon, the old religious knowledge. This method is, of course, very different from the scientific method, which goes forward boldly without any such previous commitments. However, Jamaluddin’s influence was very great not only in Egypt, but in the other Arabic countries.

  With the growth of foreign trade a new middle class arose in Egypt, and this class became the backbone of the new nationalism. Out of this class came Saad Zaghlul Pasha, the greatest of modern Egyptian leaders. Egypt is predominantly a Musl
im country, but there are still a considerable number of Copts who are Christians. These Copts are the purest of the old Egyptians. The new middle class contained both Muslims and Copts, and fortunately there was no antagonism between them. The British tried to create conflict between them, but they met with little success. The British also tried to divide the nationalist party. Occasionally they succeeded, as in India, in getting a few of the moderates to co-operate with them. But of this I shall tell you more in some subsequent letter.

  This was the position of Egypt when the World War began in August 1914. Three months later Turkey joined Germany against England and France and their allies. Thereupon England actually decided on annexing Egypt, but some difficulties arose, and instead a British protectorate over Egypt was proclaimed.

  So much for Egypt. The rest of Africa also fell a victim to European imperialism in the second half of the nineteenth century. There was a tremendous rush, and the huge continent was divided up among the European Powers. Like vultures they fell upon it, sometimes falling out with each other. Few met with any checks, but Italy was defeated in Abyssinia in 1896. Africa was predominantly under British or French control, and some parts were under Belgian, Italian, and Portuguese control. The Germans were there also till their defeat in the war. Only two independent States remained, Abyssinia in the East and little Liberia on the west coast. Morocco was under French and Spanish influence.

  The story of how these vast territories were taken possession of is long and gruesome. It is by no means over yet. Worse still were the methods adopted to exploit the continent, and especially to extract rubber. Many years ago a shock of horror passed through the so-called civilized world at the tales of atrocities committed in the Belgian Congo. The Black Man’s Burden has been a terrible one.